iPhone, Android, Blackberry, iPad version of Roadfood

I made some great progress of a streamlined version of Roadfood.com that enables you to search restaurant reviews based on your location, a specific town, and keyword. It is completely optimized for mobile devices.

It needs to be tested and several devices, so I would appreciate your comments/bugs in this thread. In particular, please click on the "Nearby" link and let me know if it shows you the restaurants within 50 miles of where you are located.

This doesn't seem to be quite working right for me. I am using an iPhone 3GS and the latest version of Safari. Using the Nearby feature, it shows Bob's New River Groves, but not the approximately five other restaurants within 50 miles that are in the "official" reviews on Roadfood.com.

Let me add - The mobile app only shows places that the Roadfood team has visited. So some user reviews will not appear.

The proximity will always vary between the site and mobile app, because the mobile app is using either GPS or cell phone towers to map your location. It should be more accurate than the desktop version.

When you say "both sites," do you mean as the second one, this site? This site won't accept the town I am in, nor nearby neighbors, on the home page using the "Search Local Eats" function. I'm actually about 18 miles from the city of Miami downtown area, about half-way to Homestead.

Using the Mobile version setting "Miami, FL" as the location, the result is expanded so I can't read the right end of the answer, but the first digit is "1" I think. The regular web site says it's 8 miles (which is wrong, btw - maybe it uses "Miami-Dade County?"

Does "Here is the URL - for now, it is available to everyone" mean that non-Insider subscribers may use it during the test period? Some friends of mine attempted to do so and were told that it was for subscribers only.

Does "Here is the URL - for now, it is available to everyone" mean that non-Insider subscribers may use it during the test period? Some friends of mine attempted to do so and were told that it was for subscribers only.

Thanks for checking - I just tweaked the config so it is open to everyone.

BTW, I am going to making regular updates throughout the week, and eventually it will require a login so people can rate restaurants, etc.

On the iPhone, even though Roadfood.com goes through the browser app Safari, the interface looks exactly like a cleaned up independent app, not a browser window. To make it appear as a standalone app you simply select "Save to Home Screen" and it puts a custom icon on your screen that you can click on and go directly to the Roadfood site without the rest of the trappings of the Safari browser. It is quite slick. No you cannot go to the iTunes App Store and download it as an app. It's as appy as a happy Roadfooder could want.

Stephen, really nice. Thanks. I tried it on my Android 2.2 AT&T HTC Inspire (also known as the HTC Desire). It works fine in the default Android browser and in Skyfire. The mobile page did not display properly in Opera Mini and Opera Mini did not support geo-location, so "find nearby restaurants" would not work. (Not sure if this also applies to Opera Mobile.) FYI: I'm glad you made it a mobile site instead of an app. I know that's less work at your end but I also find it more convenient to navigate within my browser and not have my phone (and it's memory) all cluttered up with stand-alone apps.

I'm on a wireless mininote, when I click on the above link, I get *find nearby restaurant *find nearby town *keyword search

Click on nearby restaurant, I get a page with a Roadfood header and a pop up asking to 'share location' ... Now I presume the page is built to share GPS data which is not on my system, so can there be a spot to enter 'zip code' or town & state?

The only part that seems to work is the 'keyword search' selecting 'Georgia'; I get ALL listings in Georgia.

My non-Insider friend reports that she is now able to access the page, but that she gets an error indicating that geolocation services are not supported by her browser. The device is a Blackberry 9700 Bold. Use this data point as you will.

Click on nearby restaurant, I get a page with a Roadfood header and a pop up asking to 'share location' ... Now I presume the page is built to share GPS data which is not on my system, so can there be a spot to enter 'zip code' or town & state?

It sounds like your system or your web browser is set NOT to allow websites to know your location. Only apps specifically designed to use GPS use GPS (like map or navigation apps). Most apps or websites get your location based on the mobile phone towers your device is accessing. If you want to use the geolocation feature on this website (or any other), next time the browser asks to share location, say "yes." Or, in the Android (WebKit) browser, to to Menu > More > Settings and scroll down to Enable Location and make sure it is checked. Then come back up and touch Clear Location Access and select OK (just in case you've said "no" to location access on any sites before).

Also, on Android phones go to Settings > Location. Make sure use wireless networks and use GPS satellites are checked. When GPS is active, you see a little satellite dish icon at the top of your screen.

If anybody is having a problem and using an alternative browser (other than the system browser that came pre-installed with the device), it's important to let Stephen know that. For example, Opera has a problem with Geo Location because it routes web traffic through its own servers and compresses web pages for faster loading.